5.21.24 Ordinances and Legislation

here councelor raposo here Council Samson uh vice president Pera here pursuing to the open meeting La any person may make an audio or visual recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible

number one is citizen input time anybody sign up no signed up item number two minutes of the May 14th meeting Madam chair I just need to make a motion to amend the minutes there's an error on the um on the minutes section where it says I motioned and seconded my own thing so it actually should read on a motion made by Council reposo and seconded by councelor Samson unanimously approved to approve the minute so I'm

going to make a motion to approve as amended second so there's a motion to approve as amended all in favor I item number three proposed ordinance traffic handicap parking Cambridge Street North 75 ft to Smith Street Charles Street North 24 feet East to South Maine Freedom Street North 64 feet west of South Main Street Globe Street North 200 feet east of Bay lyen Street West 85 ft north of Walnut

Street motion for emergency Preamble second motion for an emergency Preamble there a second roll call please uh call um councelor kadim yes councel Hart yeah uh yes councel Roso yes councel Samson vice president Pera yes motion to pass through all readings and enrollment there a second did you second it um there was a motion made by Council reposa seconded by um Council hot all in favor I item number four on

the agenda is an amendment to the engineering department permitting fees and we have with us could you state your name we all know who you are but let me shut this light off people watching me now good evening for the record my name is thank you Stephanie good evening for the record my name is Dan agar I'm the director of engineering and planning for the city of Fall River here this evening to discuss

um proposed engineering fee schedule increases um in your packet you'll see a letter that I had sent to the mayor back in March um with some proposed fee amendments for a few of the items that are covered from the engineering office so we did take the time to go through all of the fees in the engineering planning and Licensing offices and perform an analysis of where are we at when were

they last increased and what are other towns similarly charging so you may recall maybe 6 months ago we made it an amendment to some of the planning department fees which went well um we did take a look at licensing um and it was determined that there was no room to move on licensing we were actually at like top of the food chain with licensing fees which was good to see

that we've we've stayed on top of that when we get to some of the engineering fees that that we deal with for different types of Permitting activities we see that the last increases were back in 1996 so those are pertaining to curb openings driveway connections construction to private ways and then Street opening permits for when someone comes in and wants to connect a house to water or

connect the house to the sewer gas a number of those different things um those fees date back to 2000 so so those haven't been touched in 24 um the previous for another 28 and then we have one recent fee which is actually it's a state mandated fee uh for trench permits that's for when an AV ating contractor is doing something other than connecting to a utility um so if it's for whatever purpose it could be

for installing a foundation it could be for digging in a street and that would be the last category so when we look at those if we look at the curb opening um permit for instance the 1996 fee was established at $125 where we're proposing a fee increase to get to $250 now I know I did get a call from councel uh Dion previous to the last council meeting when this was first was

submitted and she had a question for me regarding section 6664 and 6667 where they look similar where one is for the removal of curb for the installation of a driveway and the second is just for the connection of a driveway to a public street so people do not need both of these permits there are many Street locations where we don't have Granite curb so people and now people do get confused because they

don't know that this second permit requirement is even here we've held people to that standard so the first one is for when they're actually removing Granite curb the others are for if there's a monolithic asphalt burm or no burm at all but they still need to get a permit for doing work within the right of way and connecting a driveway to a street so I explained that to her and she was acceptable of of that

response what happens is and I've spent hours looking into other municipalities which I brought some of the information of course the city of for river is unique the way that we do things all of our fees are through ordinance so there's a description of an ordinance and then the associated fee with it many of those ordinance dat back to when they created the ordinances the first time

most municipalities don't deal with things that way the DPW schedules and water connection fees and all of those different things they're outside of ordinance so it's good that there's a placeholder and they're easy for us to find them but what we find is when we try to go make a specific location of this exact fee and what it's charged for in other towns not so simple so you've got dpws water

departments sewer departments engineering departments uh Street opening departments that all get a grab for River makes this very easy for people where they just pay one fee and that covers you for all of the different types of work something else that I spoke to to councelor Diane about it was that this is an attempt to get even I think there's great room for ordinance change I know many of the

counselors often have issue with allowing greater than a 16t curb opening okay there is no additional fee for that additional 16t curb opening still the same fee there is no additional fee for digging up a 5-year Street there probably should be I agree so we do hold them to higher restoration standards but there should also be an additional fee it shouldn't just be a matter of fact that every curb curb

opening permit if I have 16 and I want to go to 30 there's that there's no additional fee whether it's for a foot or for 30t and it gets through that process so we're also looking at different ways to reward some of these audiances because some of them are a little bit outdated again they've been around a long time and potentially the implementation of some other types of ordinances that have

fees associated with them all that has to come through you but we'll be working on that next if we get to this point Seth and I actually had a conversation with the mayor when we had this discussion and we contemplated bringing on potentially um a series of interns potentially through the summer whether accounting engineering it can have a vast background of different things and all of these

ordinances there should be an audit and an analysis of where are we at when were they increased and one document that gives you guys guidance to look at okay we need to incre increase Revenue right that's always the case well clearly we haven't been increasing Revenue since 1996 on this and they're only incremental but it would be good if the council knew this is is where we have room to move this is where we can

increase so a lot of nickels add up to Dollars and when when we hit it like that it's fair across the board to everybody so I'm going to continue those conversations with the city administrator and the mayor to see if we can get that that pushed together I did it through my department but there were many fees through through ordinance that I don't touch but we should take a look

at that so I think we will be putting together something like that another thing when when we look at these so 1996 we looked at the fee that the city required for let's let's call it the street opening permit so that's the street opening permit that's the inspection fee that's the processing of all the applications that's going to different meetings that's going to the site multiple

times back in N back in $2,000 $190 could cover the staff time for doing that the increase to 300 still not going to do it but it's going to help um so anywhere that we can get these types of increases and and these are nominal increases when we look at what the contractor for instance charged in 1996 to remove a piece of Curbing and what he's charging 28 years later I guarantee you there's a dramatic

increase in what that fee is and what that cost is so the city's just allowed this to go on I think for for too long but it does take it takes time it takes effort it takes everybody to work together towards creating this ultimately when we look at the ordinances I would also recommend that it be discussed to include an escalation automatically on all of the fees whether it be 1% 2% yearly or every five years

5% there should be some automatic increase so that this process doesn't have to keep going on and we can continuously get increased fees again at a very nominal increase but it definitely helps along the way when we're looking at receipts coming in certainly I have so if you have any questions I'd be more than glad to answer them I know I tend to talk too much and take too much time anybody have any

questions just um Council hot just real quick thank you uh chairman Pera the um the fees Dan that you're talking about I you answered the question as to why you want to increase them and as far as the idea about escalating them like each year or year year and year out that would probably more likely we would have to get a good number the from there in order to as to know what the office

costs are and so it evens out right so this is tonight this is just let's let's get a bump and get a you're talking about get this bump but then talk about next I would like to talk you know through the administration about comprehensive fee analysis and moving forward y you know any of that has to come through you but I think it's worth the discussion I yield you yield anyone else when you talk about this

comprehensive plan that you're thinking of doing how long is that going to be so we we vote on this and then we're going to take two years to come back with a plan well or it going to be something quick this is this is my department so when I approached the administration about sending this down to you all I had brought up the idea of someone should take it on I'm not because it's not just

engineering and planning but ordinance again because this is an ordinance every Department really shouldn't have to work independently to do something like this it would be very easy and I think it pretty an exciting project for younger college students that could do this analysis and gather all the information from all the abing towns and come up with an idea of okay like I did with

licensing it was it was easy to see we're on par with Boston for licensing for lical licenses and restaurants and all that kind of stuff believe it or not um so there was no room for movement on that so if somebody did that I mean we have fees for everything down from dog licenses to you name it wedding certificates you name it so if somebody took that on as a

project then then we could come up with substantive change Citywide for fees that I can't tell you how long that'll take or who proposes it but again it was part of the discussion but not not for discussion tonight but what unless you want to discuss it to to some small degree it would take a while but yeah yeah I I I would have to guess it would be at least a year

Endeavor it would probably take six months just to perform the number crunching analysis of and then determine how to how to approach it anybody else have any questions is there a motion motion to pass through first reading motion made by councilor Raposa seconded by Council Kadeem all in favor I thank you very much for your time thank you sir you're welcome enjoy the game tonight item number four on the

agenda uh was engineering item number five amendments to minimum housing and Municipal organizational structures Seth Aken City administrator

so the uh the idea here so this essentially implicates um chapters 2142 and 50 um of the ordinances it references uh chapter 2 which is essentially the organizational chart uh the organizational chart currently has the minimum housing division uh within the inspectional services department um and the reference in the actual ordinance is minimum housing inspectors and sanitation inspectors um under a

single minimum housing division uh within um inspectional Services the idea here is uh Within Chapter 2 um to move that to a Health and Human Services Division uh because those inspectors uh enforce the health code um so essentially they are um they would be moving to the division where they're enforcing that code the idea here is that uh the Health and Human Services Division um does have an ongoing shared

services Grant which would allow us to add on uh a three-fifths part-time um health inspector minimum housing inspector however you want to characterize it because the the frankly the labels in chapter 50 are all over the place we have a inspector of minimum housing we have a um minimum housing inspector we have a sanitarian um yet none of those terms appear anywhere else in the ordinances

um so the idea is this um have them move to the department where that actually houses the uh code that they're going to be enforcing take advantage of the shared services grant to get a part-time inspector uh on board uh and then re-evaluate over the next uh two to three months to determine how we're going to move forward with that department in terms of adding additional full-time inspectors um as you probably

know uh the person who was the dedicated sanitation inspector um which is which is sort of a a title that evolved over time but doesn't actually appear in ordinance um had certain responsibilities over tattoo Powers over uh livestock uh a number of of pools uh a number of different um you know kind of a a salad bar of of different responsibilities retired um and there was some question as to whether or not

we needed to replace that person whether we could take some of the load off with a part-time inspector um and given the fact that for the last gosh six months uh we've been Drafting and redrafting a a new comprehensive minimum housing blighted housing vacant housing and nuisance housing single statute which actually has some teeth the idea was put that in front of the the council see

what the response is see where that goes and then try to staff up minimum housing depending on on how that goes through and how that ends up actually in ordinance that's it anybody you know you you talk about um they've been working on this Drafting and redrafting we've been doing that for a year because last summer we talked about it because many complaints that we get are from people not mowing their

lawn and it gets uh you know so high how high is high uh that somebody that there's no ordinances about that I mean one of them was so high high that they found two dead cats in the grass um which was crazy but it's been that long so now to just say okay we're going to take these people and move them into this department but what is the overall plan how many people

are we going to have because I know didn't somebody leave minimum housing and went to uh inspectional service with h Glenn didn't somebody swap over and didn't somebody retire so somebody retired we have there y so we we have a currently we have a uh divisional director which is established under chapter 42 um which is the the housing uh chapter um and that's that's fa fiori he's the director of minimum housing

under him uh currently we have two inspectors we had three um the third one uh her name was Lisa golden she retired uh after a long career with the city uh this was the person I was speaking about who did tattoos and pools and livestock and a number of other things um and so the question at this point is what are the needs of that department uh because it it seems that the two inspectors that

we have we're focusing uh more closely on on Direct housing issues uh which is really what 40 chapter 42 focuses on um and the third inspector who retired was focusing more on on kind of the other as needed things um what we're thinking is that by putting them in Health and Human Services who administers the shared services grant to get the part-time inspector that would take some of that

load off and then we'd be able to reevaluate to see if we actually won have the finances going forward for a full-time person on the city's dime uh and to what the need is for a full-time person well I mean to have inspectors with the development the housing that we're doing you need to have people that are out there inspecting and you know so that's that's different that's actually

chapter uh 10 which is the building uh So within build the building department they have their building inspectors their electrical inspectors they're plumbing and gas inspectors so this doesn't change any of that this is only for uh those uh houses that fail to meet the minimum housing requirement so basically some of them if they have lead or something like that they get a call sure but you know a

housing stock is not new correct um so you need a lot of inspectors what's the workload on the inspectors that we have now do you know I do know but I think depending who you talk to there's there's kind of different accounts of that um and at so we're we're we're kind of moving into some Personnel questions that I wouldn't be comfortable just talking about you know in a public for

uh because it kind of comes down to um well just comes down to conversations that I don't even think would be a matter of public record uh or documents that I wouldn't produce in a public records request um I would certainly be glad to explain that uh either in uh some kind of executive session or in another Forum but at this point um at the end of the day there are significant

disagreements in leadership as to the load as to the need um and we need to understand what the fact of the matter is rather than sort of the emotion of it and right now it's it's an emotional question where are these inspectors physically sitting now currently they're sitting uh adjacent to inspectional Services um so if you were to go up to the counter inspectional services to get

a building permit and look to your left you would see um all the way to your left like in your peripheral um you would see where uh plumbing and gas inspectors are sitting and then in the the next room down the hall adjacent to them is minimum housing so if they go over to Board of Health or the health department are they physically going to move they will probably physically move the food

and milk inspectors um moved last year uh as part of the reorganization um they are located physically within the health and human services department um the idea would be to do the same thing the entire fourth floor is is actually going through significant uh shifting we're redoing some offices um and moving those around I saw some of the offices they redoing I mean I I just don't feel like

we get a whole lot of information I'll yield quick Seth and you probably mentioned it already I just didn't hear it um but that Lisa has retired she has okay and who's taking over her roles so right now the the two minimum housing inspectors that we have have picked up the slack on that okay and so is that causing the uh conation you think or I think there's a couple different things

um you know to get into it but it just it seems like it's that could be I mean that's certainly part of it you know so I think the issue is that is that last year um when I first started looking at the question of what is our need within minimum housing um you know there was concern expressed um you know over the workload and as a result of that um we

we knew that we'd have one person likely retiring it didn't make sense to make a lot of wholesale changes when there would already be some change um so we did some things with with payroll and some other things to try to at least compensate people for what they were doing um and now there seems to be um some different concerns um so we're just we're trying to address those uh I know

that not everybody's happy with this I understand you know there was an email uh it it wasn't terribly factually correct uh there is no sanitation department other than in uh City operations under DC M that's our uh Solid Waste and Recycling people that actually enforce that go and look Barrel by barrel uh we have sanitation inspectors historically but there's never been a separate sanitation

department so there's no interest in doing away with the Department because that department never existed it was always housed within minimum housing under chapter 42 all right I yield so I guess just to get back to the point because I think we've convoluted with Staffing so the request before us is is solely to change the organizational flowchart so move minimum housing from um inspectional services to

Health and Human Services or yes okay so regardless of what Staffing looks like it's just an a flowchart and organizational division reporting to to which correct department head corre and it really it shouldn't change the day-to-day operations of that department in in any way until we make some decisions about Staffing but that's that's really not not an ordinance conversation correct okay uh the reason

I brought it up council is that there was the email that was distributed and I and I knew that it was on people's mind so I just wanted to I recognize that I just want to make sure for the record that we understand that that really doesn't pertain to the to the ordinance that's before us thank you um I'll make a a recommendation that we pass this through first reading there a second all

in favor I I councelor reposa no no no motion adjourn there's a motion to adjourn is there a second all in favor I thank you it's pretty quick oh yeah yeah no absolutely hey hey hey he hey heyy hey hey hey hey